Gliding among them all with a tray of drinks was the granite-faced Marcel, while Beatrice hung about the entrance to a small pantry in her tent-like brown dress, lumbering grumpily out from time to time with fresh hors d’oeuvres.
When Gideon and John entered, Ray separated himself and came worriedly to them.
"Did you talk to Ben?" he asked in a low voice. "You don’t still think…?"
"He didn’t lie about what was in the schedule," Gideon reassured him. "Someone altered the thing."
"Thank heavens." He took a relieved swig of Chablis, then did a double-take. "Altered? You mean… altered? "
"Probably not to get us," John said, looking casually around to make sure no one else was within hearing range. "Someone used it to kill Guillaume."
Ray’s eyes opened wider. "Kill Guillaume?"
"Right. Oh, by the way, Guillaume was Alain."
Gideon thought that John, who had been on the receiving end of something similar a few minutes before, could be forgiven for this. Ray responded with surprising aplomb, swallowing his mouthful of wine without quite choking on it. "Tell me," he said when it was safely down, "have I been leading a particularly sheltered existence? Is this what life is like for other people?"
"Only when the Skeleton Detective’s around," John said.
Ray looked slowly about him. The others were still involved in their conversations or their tasks, but casting uneasy or even hostile looks toward Gideon and John. Almost, it seemed to Gideon, as if they were huddling for mutual support against the newcomers, as if everything were really just fine at the Manoir de Rochebonne-or would be, if not for the intrusion of these two unwelcome meddlers. Well, he thought, in a way they were right.
"It’s so difficult to believe," Ray said softly. "One of these people is actually a murderer. But who? No, whom. No, who. I’m afraid this is really getting to me."
"Monsieur?" Marcel extended the tray of drinks.
"Merci." As Gideon took one of the slender, fluted tumblers of vermouth the telephone rang. Marcel turned, but Mathilde, closer, picked it up. She listened, murmured something, and extended it uncordially to Gideon, her face wooden. "For you."
It was Dr. Loti.
"Yes, hello again, it’s me. I think perhaps we might have been disconnected earlier," he said hopefully.
"Yes, I think we were," Gideon said, repenting for having virtually hung up on the elderly physician before.
"Ah. Well. I didn’t finish what I was telling you. You’ll be quite interested. You see, Guillaume didn’t really regain his memory‘just like that.’ That was a figure of speech. It was Mathilde du Rocher who did it all."
"Mathilde?" Gideon exclaimed inadvertently and glanced at her. She had remained standing a few feet away, edgy and suspicious, watching him, straining every nerve to hear, not bothering to pretend otherwise. An eyebrow flicked at the sound of her name.
He turned away from her and cradled the receiver against his shoulder. "What do you mean?"
"Exactly what I said, young man. Without Mathilde, Guillaume would have died. Certainly he would never have recovered his identity. Ah, Mathilde-Mathilde Sylvestre, as she was then; a strapping, buxom girl with skin like rose petals. She had just become engaged to Rene, and she had volunteered as a nurse at the hospital. She sat with the mutilated hulk that was Guillaume for two whole days and most of two nights, talking to him, crooning to him, keeping his interest focused on this world instead of the next." Dr. Loti heaved a gusty sigh.
"And?"
"And? His memory came back. It never would have happened without her; I’m convinced of it. And from that moment he began to recover. You could see it in him, in the renewed fire in that single fierce eye gleaming through the bandages. He had decided," Dr. Loti pronounced with sentimental relish, "to live."
"I see," Gideon said slowly.
He had decided to live, all right-with Mathilde’s earnest help and counsel-but not his own life. More pieces of the puzzle: As a girl Mathilde had been engaged to Alain; Gideon already knew that. Now it seemed that she had still been in love with him when he returned. For whatever their reasons-his terrible injuries, her engagement to Rene-they had decided not to take up where they had left off. But they had put their heads together long enough to hatch a plot that put Guillaume’s wealth in Alain’s hands instead of Claude’s for forty long years…and finally, a week ago, into Mathilde’s.
"These are not the sentimental imaginings of an old man," Dr. Loti cautioned him. "I tell you as a responsible physician: If not for Mathilde, Guillaume du Rocher would never have returned to this life."
"I believe you," Gideon said. "Sincerely."
TWENTY-ONE
When Gideon hung up Mathilde was still watching him intently. This time he returned her gaze, mulling over what he’d heard. There could be no question about her being involved in Alain’s deception; very probably she had authored it. How much else was she involved in?
"And what did Dr. Loti want with you?" she demanded before he had removed his hand from the telephone.
He hadn’t meant to engage her. Better to let Joly handle it. But when he floundered, searching for a reply, she prodded him.
"It was about Guillaume, wasn’t it?" Her fluty voice sliced through the chitchat. Conversations were suspended; heads turned in their direction.
"Yes, it was." Obviously, there wasn’t much point in denying it.
"What did he tell you?"
"I think it’d be better if we talked somewhere more private, Mathilde."
Gideon heard Rene’s imploring whisper behind him. "What is it? What the devil is he talking about? What’s the-?"
"Sh!" someone said imperiously, and the seigneur du manoir subsided.
"I am not afraid to talk in my own house, in front of my own family," Mathilde said firmly. She stood with her stocky legs planted, her deep, square prow of a bosom thrust aggressively forward. "I believe I have every right to know what you discussed."
Well, Joly wasn’t going to like it, but Mathilde was clearly determined to have it out right then, and Gideon wasn’t in the mood to play games putting her off. It had been a long day.
"Mathilde," he said, "I know Guillaume du Rocher was killed in 1942. And I know Alain wasn’t killed in 1942, but was alive until a week ago, playing Guillaume’s part."
There was a collective gasp and a few exclamations of consternation. Rene laughed disbelievingly. Then, abruptly, utter quiet, thick with expectancy and confusion. Stunned faces stared at Gideon. A lazy, disinterested tick of the golden clock on the mantel looped through the silence.
"And I know you know it too," he concluded flatly.
Under a layer of powder Mathilde’s face reddened momentarily. Then, like someone putting down at last a burden she’d carried too long, she exhaled a long breath. "Yes," she said, her voice perfectly steady. "You’re quite right."
Now there was an explosion of questions and ejaculations. People shouted at each other, at Mathilde, at Gideon. Mathilde waited for the noise to die down. "I think I should like to sit," she announced, and set herself bolt-upright on one of the crushed velvet chairs, hands clasped one on the other in her lap.
"And a glass of vermouth, I think." She drank briefly from the fluted tumbler that Marcel brought to her and opened her mouth to speak.
"Mother," Jules said, "you really don’t have to-"
"Oh, be quiet, Jules. What’s the difference now? It’s out. I knew he’d find out." Jules shrugged and withdrew, and Mathilde continued, not speaking to anyone in particular. "What Dr. Oliver says is true. Guillaume has been dead for forty-five years. The man who died last week was Alain du Rocher."